Z\ 


91v.1)arid  MSOlwuw 


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AFTER  THE  WAR— WHAT? 


AFTER  THE  WAR-WHAT  ? 

AN  ADDRESS  BY 

STOCKTON  AXSON 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH,  RICE  INSTITUTE 
HOUSTON,  TEXAS 

AT  THE  DINNER  AND  RECEPTION 

GIVEN  BY  THE  UNIVERSITY  CLUB,  SAN  FRANCISCO 

TO  THE  SUMMER  SESSION  FACULTY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

JULY  13,  1917 


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After  the  War -What? 

I  AM  like  the  Irishman  who  rode  in  a  sedan 
chair  without  a  bottom  and  said  that  "ex- 
cept for  the  honor  of  the  thing  he  would 
rather  have  walked."  Though  I  appreciate  the 
distinction  of  being  asked  to  speak  here  this 
evening,  I  should  prefer  to  remain  silent,  for 
what  can  I  say  that  will  be  of  interest  to  you? 
I  am  sure  you  gentlemen  do  not  want  to  hear 
a  lecture  on  literature,  and  I  cannot  tell  you 
all  about  education,  because  there  are  two  or 
three  things  about  education  which  I  have  not 
yet  found  out  myself. 

What  is  there  to  talk  about  except  the  one 
thing  we  are  all  thinking  about — the  war?  And 
anything  that  I  can  say  about  the  war  must 
impress  you  in  one  of  two  ways:  either  bro- 
midically  familiar,  as  talk  about  the  weather, 
or  something  with  which  you  fundamentally 
disagree.  It  is  to  those  who  disagree  that  I 
chiefly  address  my  words,  for  I  very  earnestly 
believe  the  things  I  am  about  to  say. 

Frankly,  what  I  have  to  say  is  from  the 
point  of  view  of  an  idealist.  Some  will  think 
that  this  is  equivalent  to  a  confession  that 
what  I  have  to  say  is,  on  the  face  of  it,  im- 
practical. But  I  profoundly  believe  that  if  the 
world  is  to  be  saved  at  all,  it  is  to  be  saved 

[3] 


93865? 


If 


by  putting  into  practise  some  things  which 
have  long  been  called  impractical.  The  world 
has  been  wrecked  on  the  hard  rocks  of  the 
"practical;"  it  is  time  to  patch  up  the  old  ves- 
sel and  put  to  open  sea,  on  the  boundless, 
fathomless,  untried  waters  of  the  ideal. 

Concerning  war  in  general,  my  own  thoughts 
are  precisely  what  they  were  four  years  ago 
— that  it  is  a  dreadful  thing,  and  a  thing  to  be 
rendered  unnecessary  just  as  soon  as  possible. 
I  do  not  know  how  you  gentlemen  feel  about 
this  particular  war  in  which  the  world  is  now 
engaged,  but  I  tell  you  quite  frankly  that  I 
do  not  thrill  over  it  at  all.  I  see  it  as  one  un- 
mitigated tragedy. 

Of  course,  I  am  not  a  pacifist.  I  say  "of 
course,"  because  I  assume  you  credit  me  with 
a  little  intelligence,  else  you  would  not  have 
invited  me  to  speak  here  this  evening,  and 
pacifism  at  this  juncture  is  unintelligent.  The 
war  is  on.  There  is  nothing  to  do  now  but  to 
go  through  with  it.  It  is  now  too  late  for 
pacifism — and  too  early. 

When  a  hornet  has  planted  himself  in  my 
cuticle  I  have  no  time  to  discuss  Shelley's 
pretty  idea  that  the  poor  little  insect  does  not 
mean  any  harm;  what  is  interesting  me  is  not 
his  intentions  but  his  accomplishments.  When 
a  mad  dog  has  broken  loose  on  a  community, 
the  citizens  have  no  time  to  hold  a  debate  on 

[4] 


the  question  whether  the  dog  is  responsible 
for  what  is  happening,  or  whether  a  germ 
has  unfortunately  got  into  his  brain.  The  cen- 
ter of  attention  is  the  dog,  not  the  germ. 

I  am  not  a  pacifist,  because  I  know  that  the 
only  way  to  get  peace  now  is  to  beat  Germany 
until  she  cries  "Enough!" — to  beat  her  until 
she  really  means  "enough"  with  that  only  sin- 
cerity of  which  she  is  capable — a  sincere  de- 
sire to  end  her  own  misery. 

We  want  to  hear  from  Germany  a  sincere 
proposal  for  peace,  not  a  repetition  of  her 
previous  hypocrisies,  her  puerile  attempts  to 
make  it  appear  that  the  Allies,  and  not  she, 
are  responsible  for  continuing  the  war.  We 
want  from  her  the  expression  of  a  genuine 
and  heartfelt  desire  for  peace  for  her  own 
sake,  and  an  intimation  that  she  is  ready  to 
come  to  terms — terms,  I  trust,  very  little  of 
her  own  making.  Her  previous  proposals  have 
merely  reemphasized  her  muddle-headedness 
— her  assumption  that  anybody  else  was  so 
muddle-headed  as  to  be  deceived  by  the 
clumsy  ruse. 

Germany  makes  war  with  intelligence  and 
effectiveness  that  are  amazing,  but  outside  of 
war,  in  diplomacy,  her  mental  processes  are 
ludicrous — resemble  the  stupid  obliquities  of 
a  defective  child.  This  is  not  strange,  for  men- 
tal derangement  frequently  follows  moral  de- 

[5] 


linquency.  There  was  a  time  when  the  world 
looked  to  Germany  for  philosophy,  but  that 
time  ended  when  Germany  permitted  herself 
to  be  exploited  by  war  lords,  and  became  ob- 
sessed with  one  evil  idea  to  which  she  subor- 
dinated all  philosophy,  as  well  as  all  humane 
considerations.  Once  started  on  that  road, 
Germany  went  the  inevitable  way  to  moral 
ruin,  and  now  presents  the  spectacle  of  a 
crazed  giant,  fighting  with  the  furious  strength 
of  a  maniac,  and  at  the  same  time  babbling 
the  imbecile  incoherences  of  a  paretic. 

There  can  be  no  real  peace  until  Germany 
is  brought  to  her  senses,  and  there  is  only  one 
way  to  do  that,  by  the  methods  adopted  in  the 
violent  wards  of  insane  asylums.  Germany 
has  ceased  to  understand  any  other  language. 
I  love  peace  so  much  that  I  want  this  war 
prosecuted  to  such  a  finish  that  henceforth 
those  who  do  not  love  peace  will  be  extremely 
careful  about  "starting  anything."  The  super- 
intendent of  a  rescue  mission  for  men  told  me 
recently:  "It  isn't  all  praying  down  here  at 
this  mission.  Sometimes  we  have  to  knock 
them  down  first  and  pray  over  them  after- 
wards." Militant  religion  is  religion  alive.  I 
want  to  see  a  peace  so  militant  that  no  hel- 
meted  and  booted  kaiser  is  going  to  trifle 
with  it. 

At  present,  the  soldiers  are  all  that  count. 

[6] 


Talk  is  useless.  But  when  the  war  ends  and 
statesmen  begin  the  work  of  reconstruction, 
I  hope  it  will  be  begun  in  a  new  spirit.  I  want 
to  see  a  new  world  emerge  from  this  war — 
a  world  built  up  on  a  set  of  ideas  quite  differ- 
ent from  many  of  the  old  ideas.  If  we  cannot 
get  that  much  out  of  this  great  tragedy,  then 
may  God  help  us,  for  we  are  pitiful  fools. 

I  have  just  said  that  I  am  not  a  pacifist,  but 
I  am  certainly  not  the  sort  of  anti-pacifist  who 
runs  so  tumultuously  into  print  nowadays. 
The  latest  of  these  to  come  to  my  notice  is 
Francis  J.  Oppenheimer,  who  writes  a  piece 
for  the  magazine  which  he  calls  "The  Failure 
of  Pacifism."  The  failure  of  pacifism  is  not 
half  so  obvious  as  Mr.  Oppenheimer's  failure 
to  make  his  points.  The  trouble  with  the  Op- 
penheimer type  of  anti-pacifist  is  that  he  has 
not  learned  anything  from  the  present  war, 
and  he  who  cannot  learn  from  this  war  is  un- 
teachable.  His  is  the  old-time  thesis  that  war 
is  a  decree  of  fate,  a  thing  which  must  con- 
tinue because  it  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of 
things  and  in  human  nature.  It  all  resembles 
the  pious  cant  of  former  days  which  objected 
to  lightning  rods  and  vaccine  on  the  ground 
that  God  must  have  intended  us  sometimes  to 
be  shocked  by  lightning  and  sometimes  to  be 
pitted  by  smallpox,  else  he  would  not  have 
devised  such  things. 

[7] 


The  professional  anti-pacifists  do  not  really 
want  peace.  The  chief  obstruction  hitherto  in 
the  way  of  peace  has  been  that  not  enough 
people  wanted  it  hard  enough.  My  hope  and 
belief  is  that  when  this  war  is  over  the  great 
majority  are  going  to  want  peace  so  passion- 
ately that  they  will  find  a  way  to  get  it.  What 
human  beings  want  with  all  their  hearts  they 
usually  find  a  way  to  get. 

The  means  and  the  machinery:  that  must 
be  worked  out  with  patience  in  the  future. 
First  is  the  honest  will  to  peace;  "will  to 
power"  plus  human  ingenuity  has  produced 
miraculous  enginery  of  destruction;  let  peo- 
ple be  as  hot  for  peace  in  the  future  as  they 
have  been  for  power  in  the  past,  and  we  shall 
have  a  constructive  enginery.  A  League  To 
Enforce  Peace  seems  to  be  the  most  plausible 
suggestion  thus  far  made — the  nations  com- 
bined to  use  their  force  for  a  new  purpose,  to 
keep  the  peace — and  yet  no  such  new  idea 
either,  for  it  has  long  been  in  practise  in  the 
municipal  police  force. 

Whatever  the  means  and  the  machinery, 
the  all-important  thing  is  the  spirit  behind  it. 
Because  that  spirit  was  absent  in  the  past  we 
have  the  monstrosities  of  the  present.  A  few 
obvious  things  are  necessary  to  usher  in  this 
new  spirit: 

First  of  all  is  this  honest  and  burning  and 

[8] 


militant  desire  for  peace,  about  which  I  have 
been  talking. 

Secondly,  is  an  international  morality  ap- 
proximating individual  morality,  which  does 
not  mean  the  morality  of  archangels,  but 
means  quite  ordinary,  every-day  morality, 
merely  a  recognition  of  other  people's  rights 
and  our  own  respect  for  those  rights.  To  a 
considerable  degree,  we  have  already  taken 
over  that  individual  morality  idea  into  our 
business  relations,  have  combined  coopera- 
tion with  competition,  have  substituted  a  rea- 
sonable degree  of  honesty  and  fair  dealing  for 
the  old  cut-throat  methods,  and  have  done 
this  not  from  any  motive  of  cloud- treading 
altruism,  but  simply  because  we  found  that 
this  was  the  only  way  to  live  and  do  business 
comfortably. 

A  third  thing  necessary  to  the  realization 
of  this  new  spirit  is  the  reconciliation  of  the 
idea  of  patriotism  with  the  idea  of  a  world- 
neighborhood.  Certainly  every  man  should 
love  his  own  country  most,  but  that  does  not 
mean  that  in  order  to  love  his  own  country 
he  must  hate  some  other  country  or  group  of 
countries.  Again  the  proposition  is  so  simple 
as  to  seem  almost  trivial  in  the  statement,  and 
yet  it  is  because  we  have  proceeded  on  the 
opposite  idea,  of  national  hatreds,  "natural 
enemies,"  and  what  not,  that  we  have  had 

[9] 


perpetual  threats  of  war,  finally  leading  to 
this  present  debacle.  We  have  been  as  false 
and  artificial  in  our  conceptions  of  patriotism 
as  would  be  a  father  who  should  profess  that, 
in  order  to  love  his  own  children,  he  must  of 
necessity  hate  all  other  children.  The  true 
patriotism  must  be  sufficiently  intelligent  to 
make  room  for  an  understanding  of  the  sim- 
ple proposition  that  the  modern  world  has 
become  so  inter-related  that  the  welfare  of 
each  is  bound  up  in  the  welfare  of  all. 

Such  are  some  of  the  elements  that  must 
enter  into  this  new  spirit  which  is  to  make 
a  new  and  better  world.  In  order  to  bring 
about  the  desired  end  there  are  two  or  three 
things,  quite  practical  things,  to  which  we 
shall  have  to  give  attention : 

First,  we  shall  have  to  clarify  our  ideas 
about  "national  honor,"  shall  have  to  cease 
calling  that  "honor"  in  a  nation  which  would 
be  blackguardism  in  an  individual.  All  the 
nations  have  been  thus  guilty  in  the  past,  per- 
haps Germany  most  of  all,  but  none  is  in- 
nocent. Not  all  the  guilt  of  starting  this  war 
is  Germany's.  The  roots  of  a  great  evil  spread 
beyond  any  single  event,  far  back  into  an 
evil  past.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  of  no  great 
importance  who  started  the  war;  Germany 
has  prosecuted  it  with  such  diabolical  wicked- 
ness that  the  question  of  who  started  it  has 

[10] 


become  entirely  secondary.  But  back  of  all 
special  events  leading  up  to  the  war,  there  has 
been  this  wrong  kind  of  nationalism,  this  un- 
intelligent nationalism,  which  has  substituted 
truculence  for  decency,  and  deceit  for  honest 
dealing. 

In  the  next  place,  we  should  keep  always 
and  solemnly  in  mind  what  it  is  that  this  war 
is  being  fought  for.  Many  causes  contributed 
to  its  origin,  many  of  them  base  causes,  but  as 
the  war  has  proceeded  the  world  has  been 
sobered,  and  it  has  become  apparent  that,  in 
the  providence  of  events,  this  war  turns  out 
to  be  a  titanic  struggle  to  free  human  society, 
once  and  for  all,  from  the  ambitious  manipu- 
lations of  a  few  autocrats.  It  is  precisely  this 
aspect  of  the  war  which  lends  a  solemn 
grandeur  to  the  otherwise  intolerable  tragedy 
— that  it  is  a  fight  to  end  forever  the  condi- 
tions that  made  this  war  possible,  that  it  is  a 
fight  "to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy." 
We  must  bear  that  consciously  in  mind  every 
day  and  every  hour,  and  never  be  seduced, 
even  momentarily,  into  the  heresy  that  we  are 
in  this  war  for  some  national  advantage.  The 
whole  glory  of  our  position  is  that  we  are  in 
it  to  gain  nothing  except  that  which  we  had 
before  the  war  began — the  right  to  live  and 
govern  ourselves  as  a  free  people;  and  that 
we  are  in  this  war  for  the  purpose  of  guaran- 

tii] 


teeing  this  same  right  to  all  other  nations — to 
Germany  herself  in  the  end. 

In  the  third  place,  we  should  teach  a  differ- 
ent sort  of  history  in  our  schools — a  more 
truthful  history.  We  have  been  pitifully  timid 
in  both  our  morality  and  our  patriotism,  gar- 
nishing both  with  palpable  lies  for  fear  our 
children  might  not  be  moral  and  patriotic.  In- 
stead of  a  straightforward  and  truthful  ac- 
count of  the  really  noble  story  of  America,  we 
have  served  the  children  with  Jingoistic  boast- 
ful lies,  have  told  them  the  story  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution  as  if  it  were  a  cheap  photo- 
melodrama,  painting  all  Americans  snow- 
white,  all  British  ink-black.  We  would  do  well 
to  introduce  into  our  school  history  the  mod« 
ern  tendency  toward  verity  in  our  better 
drama.  Of  course,  it  is  easier  to  paint  black 
villains  and  white  saints  than  to  draw  true 
portraits,  but  the  harder  thing  is  the  better 
worth  doing.  Besides,  what  really  happened 
in  the  Revolution  is  such  an  honorable  story 
that  it  makes  better  reading  and  better  moral- 
ity than  our  timid  lies.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
keep  on  telling  lies  about  America.  America 
stands  the  light  of  truth  exceedingly  well. 

Finally,  gentlemen,  there  is  one  other  thing 
that  is  necessary,  and  it  is  a  strange  thing  to 
talk  about  at  a  Smoker,  but  what  I  have  to 
say  is  incomplete  unless  I  mention  it.  I  have 

[12] 


been  saying  that  the  world  needs  a  new  spirit, 
but  what  the  world  really  needs  is  the  re- 
newal of  an  old  spirit,  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
Not  a  theological  Christ,  but  that  spirit  of  the 
universe  which  puts  righteousness  before 
glory,  and  the  love  of  man  alongside  the  love 
of  God;  that  spirit  which  does  not  circum- 
scribe brethren  in  national  boundary  lines,  but 
calls  every  man  "brother."  The  "new"  thing 
that  I  have  been  talking  about  is  really  a  very 
old  thing,  so  old  that  men  had  forgotten  all 
about  it.  It  is  the  thing  which,  as  I  understand 
it,  is  referred  to  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
gospel  of  St.  John :  "In  the  beginning  was  the 
Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the 
Word  was  God."  My  whole  contention  is  that 
there  is  little  hope  for  the  world  unless  we 
pause,  and  remember,  and  understand,  and 
get  back  to  first  principles.  As  this  same  chap- 
ter of  the  Bible  says  in  continuance:  "In  him 
was  life;  and  the  life  was  the  light  of  men. 
And  the  light  shineth  in  darkness;  and  the 
darkness  comprehended  it  not" 

My  bitterness  against  Germany  is  due  to 
this — that  she  has  substituted  death  for  "life," 
and  darkness  for  "light,"  and  has  been  the 
least  "comprehending"  of  all  the  nations — in 
short,  that  she  has  violated,  and  flagrantly 
violated,  every  principle  of  Tightness,  as  I  un- 
derstand Tightness. 

[13] 


But  when  I  pause  to  reflect,  I  realize  that  it 
is  not  Germany  as  a  whole  which  has  done 
this,  but  a  few  autocrats  and  bureaucrats,  who 
have  been  able  to  seduce  and  betray  a  whole 
nation  until  she  has  temporarily  lost  the  clear 
spiritual  vision  she  once  had.  In  all  history 
no  such  rape  was  ever  committed  before,  and 
with  such  appalling  results.  When  day  breaks 
upon  this  frantic  night  of  outrage,  surely,  of 
all  nations,  bewildered  Germany  herself  will 
be  most  aghast  when  she  realizes  what  has 
been  done  to  her.  In  all  this  work  of  libera- 
tion no  nation  will  be  so  much  liberated  as 
Germany,  for  none  has  had  so  much  to  be  lib- 
erated from.  Belgium  was  tied  hand  and  foot 
and  scored  all  over  with  cruel  wounds,  but  the 
soul  of  Belgium  was  untouched.  It  is  the  trag- 
edy of  Germany  that  they  who  got  power  over 
her  betrayed  not  her  body  only,  but  her  soul. 
There  is  no  deeper  tragedy  than  that. 


[14] 


PRINTED  BY  PAUL  ELDER  AND  COMPANY  DURING 
OCTOBER,  NINETEEN  HUNDRED  AND  SEVENTEEN 


Y&  ZJ4V3 


